THE INTELLECTUAL INERTIA OF THE CHILD

Early in life a child's thoughts lag behind the adult's, causing continual communication problems. One aspect of this lag is delayed reactivity. The child
frequently responds not to the question at hand but to the preceding question giving
his responses the appearance of nonsense.

One cause of this lag is discontinuity. The child is unable to concentrate on the
same object for long periods of time for two reasons: first, his inability to sustain
attention over an extended period due to the rapid fatigue of his mental processes
and second, the swiftness and readiness with which his attention is caught by external occurrences, unexpected diversions, or the random flow of peripheral or
internal impressions. This instability is in itself a manifestation of a lag, as it
indicates an inability to submit, in other than a passive manner, to the diverse
impulses that may arise. Another aspect of discontinuity is preservation. The uttered word, the mental image, or the idea tends to
reappear, to persist in an ebb and flow. This tendency is all the more striking because
the perseverating theme often seems completely random.

These two seemingly contradictory consequences of the child's mental lag may give
rise to accusations of recalcitrance or deliberate inattention on the part of the
child, whereas in actuality they stem from a real inability. Another common effect
of this lag is the child's failure to evoke images that would seem to follow naturally
from the circumstances or the terms of a conversation. Once again, the child's failure can easily
give the impression of stubbornness or contrariness, and indeed it often becomes this,
given the readiness with which "I can't" is transformed into "I won't" in children.

Actually, thought exists only through the structures it imposes on things. Initially these structures are very elementary. At the origin of thought we can note
the existence only of paired elements. The elementary unit of thought is this binary
structure, not the terms that constitute it. Duality precedes unity. The pair exists
before the isolated lement. Any term that is identifiable by thought—that is, "thinkable"—requires a complementary term from which it may be differentiated
and to which it may be contrasted. What is true, for example, of color discrimination, which according to Koffka is possible only through contrast,
applies to intellectual notions as well. Without this initial relationship of the pair,
the building of further relationships would be impossible.

The dependence of thought on prior behavior is quite marked in the child. Adult
thought is able to disengage situations and problems from nonintellectual contingencies. The mental activity of a child, on the contrary, is usually explicable
only within the framework of his total activity. Even intellectual situations retain a
subjective element. While the superior development of the adult is marked by his
ability to focus his primary, and even exclusive, attention on the object of his
reflections, for the child an object generally remains subordinated to the totality of
his current reactions. An object is not merely conditioned or altered by his desires
or affective states (an often-noted occurrence); it is also subject to circumstances
that may, for short or long periods, influence or even motivate his behavior.

ELEMENTARY STRUCTURES OF THE CHILD'S THOUGHT

The child's thought is not amorphous; it is not simple "digression." It has an
elementary structure which has accompanied thought from the very outset. Otherwise, further progress would be inconceivable, for thought would be unable
to pass beyond pure sensorimotor data, when in actuality what distinguishes thought is its ability to
rearrange data.

Nevertheless, thought's first stage can be misconstrued. It can be mistaken for a
mere succession, entailing simply an endless substitution of one term by another
and therefore reflecting a total absence of organization. This is the negative aspect
of the first observable outlines of the most rudimentary forms of ideation. Long
before psychologists spoke of "digression,"—that is, simple and continuous movement from thought to thought in children— Heilbronner explained the "flight
of ideas" observed in manics as the simple association of one idea with the next, so
that each idea formed two distinct pairs, one with its predecessor and one with the
idea following but had no overall unity of meaning. Thus, thought might be deflected in a different direction by each new term; it would have no direction of its
own, and its course would be completely determined by any one of the associations
that might be generated by the last uttered term. This description is obviously too
schematic. In particular, it does not take into account affective impulses or interests
that are left more or less intact even in the most advanced stages of intellectual
dissociation. It is therefore false, for it purports to explain the sequential flow of
ideas as merely successive associations. Such a description is no more than a static
analysis of the succession after it has taken place. But even a distribution of pairs is
more than the simple result of associations in which each term is linked mechanically to the one immediately preceding and the one
directly following.

The pair is the most elementary structure, and without it, thought could not exist.
It is a kind of intellectual molecule that encapsulates the act of thought in its simple
and least differentiated form. The tautology A equals A, which adds nothing to our
knowledge of an object, is nevertheless indispensable if we are to be aware of "A" as
an object. In thought, the pair precedes the isolated object, whose very existence
depends on the pair.

The operational field is distinct from the perceptual field. Even with objects
simply situated in space, it is one thing to ascertain positions and another to establish them practically, even with a model directly at hand. Certain subjects are
able to do the one but can no longer do the other; their perceptual field persists but
falls short of that order necessary for the establishment of the operational field.
There is something in the operational field that places it beyond purely empirical
data. There is the potential that transcends the fact, which precedes it and consequently eludes the senses and is part of that which is not immediately
perceptible. For example, the operational field of measurement is of this nature.
The instrument of measurement, the middle term, is as material and immediate as are the two terms of the pair to be compared. But as soon as it becomes an
instrument of comparison, it becomes itself part of the operational field and takes
on characteristics that are more than its mere individual relations with this or that
other object. It becomes the symbol of magnitude, which varies in degree according to the objects to be compared. It implies a possible alignment, an
operational, potential alignment. It presupposes an order that can only be imagined
ideally, in an intellectualized space. This instrument of measurement presupposes a
certain constancy in magnitude itself, without which it could not measure its variations.

At the sensorimotor level, the step beyond the pair is the configuration; at the
intellectual level, it is the sequence—that is, an ordered succession of either objects
or events. In both cases the elementary structure is integrated into an order that
enables it to pass to a new operational level. In concrete situations, the elementary
reaction is integrated by means of this configuration forming capacity that represents the dynamic
union of space and time, as yet not dissociated. In the case of objects to be compared
or effects to be explained, integration is of perceptual appearances with an order
employing symbols as its necessary instrument. As an order that remains permanently
operational, integration is distinct from the empirical or experiential order, whatever the
activities currently being carried out.

CONTRADICTIONS BETWEEN SOURCES OF INFORMATION

A first source of contradictions, actual or potential, lies in the various ways in
which the child begins to communicate with his surroundings. The role played by direct contact with things is not nearly as extensive as it is with most animals. The
child's social environment codetermines his existence, and it provides the first
means of satisfying his needs. His practical helplessness is compensated for by his
ability to express his desires. Thus, on the one hand, there is direct, personal
experience; and on the other, there is language and with it, the social and historical
traditions communicated through language. Initially, there is no agreement between
these two types of experience, and thus attempts to discover points of agreement
may seem to us contradictory or peculiar.

But neither in personal experience nor in social traditions is there an initial
homogeneity or coherence. When personal experience becomes separated from practical situations, two types of thought emerge that seem to be in competition,
though both stem from the same causes. One is a kind of perceptual realism that retains only those aspects or features of a given thing that make particularly vivid
or striking impressions on the senses, a pure phenomenalism which reduces reality
to an infinite mutability of diverse forms or objects. The other is a kind of confused
image, in which the part played by impressions derived directly from things and the part
originating in the subject—that is, in his affectivity as well as his personal
activity—remain undifferentiated: the practical merges with the perceptual. Experience is no more than a succession of situations to which the subject reacts.
His representation of this experience is the image of these global wholes, while
specific features and details are merely the circumstances surrounding an act that
have no distinct individuality of their own. Thus, in so called syncretic representation, the
qualities of things are at every point fused with each other, whatever their differences
and regardless of whether their associations are essential or accidental.

The opposition between phenomenalism and syncretism seems obvious; nevertheless, they alternate and coexist. Their principles are, in effect, similar: a
syncretic image cannot emerge from its indescribable confusion except by reducing
itself to one sole and unique aspect, which, being undistinguished and undistinguishable
from the other aspects, creates the illusion of being whole Often, description consists
of an enumeration of details that are seen as equivalent, whereas in actuality they
comprise an extremely varied collection of items. But often, too, a single detail is
retained for all the other items. And, finally, only a single detail may be noted and take
shape in the perceptual field. The shortcoming is the same in both cases: in syncretism,
the inability to perceive multiple features as such, and in phenomenahsm, the inability to
counterpose to the pure succession of situations or appearances the constant or essential aspects of things.
Thus, there can be two orientations, two contrary yet complementary forms of behavior corresponding, on the one hand, to an activity
among things and, on the other, to contemplative expectancy.

The particular and sometimes incidental feature mistaken for the whole must inevitably lead the child into incongruities or contra-dictions. But as his ability to
contrast and compare his representations with each other increases, he also finds
increased opportunities to analyze them better, complete them, or correct them.

The child's propensity for pragmatic description gives rise to explanations frequently in the operational mode He imagines that things operate along the same
lines as his own activity or activity he has observed: he limits their existence or
origins to the practical activities in which he sees them participate—hence, his
inability to go beyond the utilitarian origin of things, which he regards as ultimate,
even for objects for which a natural origin would seem fitting. In the operational
mode one thus finds common actions confused with individual actions, and personal experiences intermingled with
custom.

Tradition is the other source of a child's representations. Initially, tradition is
transmitted to the child from the social environment by means of language, a phenomenon whose structure and elements are themselves rich in meanings.
Through language he learns to fix the identity of beings and things, and at the same
time to express his own attitudes toward them. This role, in fact, is so essential that
it is sometimes difficult to distinguish between the contribution of raw experience
and the influence of words and grammatical forms. Their mutual appropriation, however, may entail long delays, for they are two systems with observable
disagreements between them.

The child's intense analytical efforts to understand both his own thoughts and
the thoughts of others may terminate in the most fruitless of formalisms or in nonsense. The system of words and meanings consists of a wide variety of
structures that may set their own course, sometimes even inopportunely. The most
obvious example of this is when figurative turns of phrase are literally interpreted;
the associations that unite figurative and literal terms or images are transferred to
the things themselves. In addition, the child often mistakes as features of reality
those elements of language which are in fact only constellations of sounds and meanings:
morphological assimilations, oppositions, ambivalences, or semantic affinities—whose effects the
child has not yet sufficiently mastered.

Along with the contradictions that may develop either among these images or between images and things are those resulting from the confrontation of the child's
own experience with the folklore at his disposal—for example, the tales, beliefs, or
explanations transmitted from adult to child or from child to child. Finally, there is
a third form of tradition: instruction, the rational or scientific explanation of things
into which a child does not hesitate to introduce images familiar to him in contexts
that are beyond his understanding. The mechanisms he may work out in his imagination,
ingenious as they sometimes are, introduce still other anomalous elements into his ideas, already of unusual origins.

Perhaps the most important factor in the contradictions among the child's ideas
is his lack of a precise sense of his own contradictions. A certain systematization of ideas
must be achieved before oppositions and incongruities between ideas become comprehensible. In the child's mind,
however, ideas flow successively, each potentially attracting or influencing another, each capable of leaving a more or less fluctuating
impression of continuity or identity but together lacking anything fixed that would allow
them to be compared and contrasted without their mutual contamination. If the need for
coherence makes itself felt (and this often occurs only under the pressure of objections), other ideas arise, not to resolve the contradiction but to reconcile the
irreconcilable with the aid of a new flood of images.

The child's usual ignorance of the sources of these ideas adds to his inability to
coordinate them into coherent arguments. He confuses those deriving from language
with those generated by perception, and those stemming from tradition with those
drawn from experience. He confuses conclusions arrived at logically with statements
accepted on authority, and simple analogy with discursive argument. The fixed term
that would allow him to arrange his ideas according to their sources is still lacking.

Sometimes the child attributes the same idea alternately to his own invention and to the
assertions of his father, or he imagines himself to have just discovered it or always to have known it. Initially, he has only
a totally subjective impression of surprise or attraction; but since he is unable to go
beyond the event that occupies his attention to assign it to a place in a sequence, he
loses sight of the origin of the object of his current representation once this impression fades. A similar cause prevents him from
distinguishing between what comes from his own resources and what he has obtained
from others. Once again the alternation of attribution depends on purely subjective
whims, according to whether it seems more cogent to answer for the idea himself or to
invoke the source of all authority—his father. These contradictory statements do not bother
him, as he is equally incapable of distributing the origins of his conceptions among
persons or among specific moments or periods in time. He is as incapable of
delimiting the object of his thoughts in time and space as he is of assigning to his
thoughts a subjective order of existence.

For the child, the problem is not to choose among invariants, but to distinguish
them and bring them into accord with his perceptions of reality. In contrast to the
thought of an adult, a child's thought does not proceed over distinctly circumscribed pathways in
stages that reciprocally control each other, relying on terms whose meanings are fixed.
Although thought continuously modifies itself as it proceeds along the path of normal
development, it does so not through neglect and unawareness of its previous stages or
through total transformation on encountering each new object, but rather through
progressive differentiation and identification.

THE ORIGINS OF MENTAL REPRESENTATION

The greatest novelty in the history of human behavior is that activity which is
reflected in speech, and which consequently translates things into words. Thus human activity was able to move gradually toward consciousness. We are
constantly amazed by the existence in animals of spatial and temporal connections
between an act and its effect, which, nonetheless, do not warrant the inference of
representational thought. It is the miracle of instinct, we are accustomed to say. But
the "miracle" of representational thought usually goes unnoticed. An observation
apprehended in its global and isolated reality seems to us a miracle, but a phenomenon with which we are
too familiar because it takes place within us, is no longer a miracle.

The translation of an object into an image or idea was acquired, in principle and
practice, long before thought became capable of comprehending itself. The "how" was thenceforth merely a problem of philosophical speculation or correct
technique. It was not by chance that Plato and Aristotle were able to initiate the era
of a Reason appropriate to things, Reason par excellence. The canons of correct definition first
became possible and necessary only at the conclusion of a period of groupings, confusions, and conflicts between the intentions of the word and the fate
of things. This period was followed by another in which the problem was reduced to a mere
acknowledgment that the world is reflected in thought, or vice versa, depending on
which is given priority in prevailing philosophical speculation. But the possibility
of a precise correspondence between the world and thought, on which the attempt at correct definition is postulated, is by no means a fact or an immediate certainty
(Wallon 1942). More primitive civilizations demonstrate the role of rites in serving
as a bond of continuity between the refractory object and an imagined order, the
role of the word as a magical incantation rather than for description, or the role of
the ritual as an instrument of communication with alien forces that must be propitiated. In short,
they demonstrate the whole of an age-long effort that has driven man—aspiring to the
exercise of a power over things beyond the power available to him through his sensorimotor capacities alone—to apply to things the
tool of affective or practical mimicry, prayer or oral command, that has already
united him with his fellow man and gradually brought him to imitation. And imitation, in turn, through the constant interplay of increasingly refined and more
fitting intellectual and verbal techniques, has given rise to representational thought.
But such a correspondence between the mental and the material world is much too finely tuned for the child not to also have to grope and feel his way to attain it.

The object is commonly regarded as a primitive datum of perception that is transmitted as such to cognition. Nevertheless, it is not necessary to assume an
image of an object to explain the reactions it is able to elicit in animals, children, or
even adults. It may serve as means or ends without yet being identified—that is to
say, isolated from other phenomena as a distinct, permanent, individual, and specific reality. That kind of representation would, in fact, seem to be at variance
with the conditions and unfolding of action. Directed toward the sensorimotor field, action absorbs for its own use what the environment places at its disposal.
It subordinates the self-sufficient existence of things, retaining only what they
contribute to the operation in progress.

Practical activity is more cognizant of situations than of objects. It moves among
favorable or unfavorable circumstances alike, arranging them in configurations, then in accordance with its ends and capacities.
The ingenuity demonstrated by an animal or child in the face of practical problems
shows that such activity operates in a dynamic field in which nothing acquires existence except as a function of possible or propitious gestures. Even in the adult,
this occurs more often than it would seem. Images of things, when they intervene,
obstruct the motor unfolding of acts. There are even pathological cases in which
the image is completely abolished, although the automatic ability to grasp or use a
thing remains intact. Moreover, at the level of perception itself an object may no
longer be comprehended as an object, even though it still retains that identity in
each of its sensuous aspects. Although the subject may still be able to name the
diverse impressions the object calls forth as he experiences them, the object itself
is not recognized as such.

Thus the object does not consist of a simple aggregate of impressions. It superimposes on them a meaning of which they are only the mutually
complementary cues; through this meaning the object is able to advance to the level of realities subsisting by and for themselves, with their properties, their
identity, their names, and their durability. The object therefore transcends perception— which is only a bare occurrence, the mere encounter of object with
subject. Perception provides the content of subjective experience with a new form
of integration and joins experience with a mode of existence that enables the contents to become independent of
experience. The immediate act in the presence of a thing—that is, perception at the
sensorimotor level—is repeated at the intellectual level, where the object must take its
identity from among the different aspects and effects attributable to it but which it also
Possesses in common with other objects distinct and different from itself. After having
given rise to its own perception, the object must flow become the concern of thought.

However elementary or immediate an affirmation of the sameness of an object might appear, it presupposes from the outset that the object is detached from
awareness and confronts it with its own existence. But such an affirmation may also present an entire scale of different meanings. Empiricism saw as the first stage
in object recognition the understanding that an object is indeed itself or, if present
intermittently, the same object through time. But the cohesiveness that provides an
object with a principle of constancy also implies belief in an enduring conformity
between the thing and the recollection of it. Usually the child, like certain mentally ill
people, does not bother to question this belief. He may doubt the identity of an
object as itself or over time, but this doubt is implicit in the object's representation,
not in reference to it. Instead of being critical, the child is credulous; and instead of
irréalisme, he creates phantasmagorias.

A second level is the sameness of simple resemblance, which seems to go beyond the particular to the categorical. Empiricism would see in this process the
advent of abstraction. But in the child the operation is not so clear-cut. He has a
direct experience of objects that are practically interchangeable. He does not probe
into differences beyond usefulness or his present interests. The equivalent is as
immediate for the child as the identical. There are objects that are by nature nonparticular within the limits of their use; they necessarily tend toward the
generic. But there are also objects that are general from the outset (for example,
"Daddy," whom initially the small child sees in any and every man) and that must
gradually be reduced to the particular. Unless practice permits no substitution, the
object remains for a long time in an intermediate space between the general and the
particular.

A third level of sameness is commonality, not of aspects or effects, but of existence and substance. This identity is also far from simple. It may reduce either
the different or the distinct to sameness—for example, steam, rain, or a river to
water; or a table, a canoe, or a cottage to wood. The ability to subsume the unlike
under the similar now seems to have reached a much higher level. But actually, identity of substance has not acquired a systematic rigor in the child. He cannot
explain the cycle traversed by water as it passes from the earth to the clouds by
evaporation, or the transformation of trees into different objects by the felling of
forests and the carving of wood. Often, he even confuses or reverses the order of
terms; for example, he may say that trees are made of cabinet wood. However, no matter how vague it may be,
the unity of substance is by no means unimportant in his thought. To think things is
to attribute to them a certain unity. Despite the syncretic confusions still evident,
the unity of substance, which grounds the world of objects in matter, tends to dissolve their subjective associations.

A child's method of identification and that of the adult are in one sense opposites. In the former, there is simple assimilation; in the latter, integration. The
child makes a thing of an aspect, a model of the image, and a person of the effigy.
If the sea is blue only in places, there is a difference in substance. Burning coal is
white or red, depending on whether the child's attention is directed toward the ashes or the flame. The statue in the manger that he sees in church seems so clearly
to him to be the little Jesus descended from heaven to bring him toys that to explain this movement in space he feels constrained to attribute wings to the statue;
for the child, it is better to distort perception than acknowledge a distinction
between the likeness and the person. Does the child really deceive himself? The question is of little import here. What he is unable
to reconcile is the statue and the thing it represents, when the two exist in different
places and are different in substance. The idolatrous may believe in a real presence,
but it is only a presence, not total confusion. It is a participation that implies
omnipresence. God is an idol because He may exist simultaneously in different places, in different forms, or in
different substances. Thus, He has an existence that is no longer the restricted
existence of information from the senses. The most superstitious fetishist assumes
occult powers and thereby transcends confusion between perception and being. He operates on at least two levels, and all his practices are aimed at
establishing relations between them. In contrast, the child operates on only one level,
at which he juxtaposes and segregates data from every source: perceptual, pragmatic,
or verbal. Clearly lacking the adult's ability to identify objects accurately, the child
continually takes one for the other.

To describe or name an object, or to class it according to its characteristics and
qualities among other objects, is to ascertain its nature, not to explain, or even to
confirm, its existence. An object might vanish and never reappear, but its representation would
remain and allow it to be compared with other objects, as, for example, in paleontology; the case would seem to be similar even for a purely
imaginary object. To define is to provide ideation with its material and tools and to
enlarge and refine means of understanding. But the real is not implied either in a
representation or in its analyses or systems. Reality is contingent on relations
which, without regard for similarities and differences, link fact to fact. An edifice
of qualities is constructed on the foundations of perception, to bring together objects never before
observed in association. But perception also entails a here and a now, which attest to
the presence of the object and which, insofar as the fact of existence presupposes the
means to exist, pose the problem of because.

The two orientations that proceed from the perceived—representation and relation—are not themselves unrelated. They may complement each other, or they
may operate alternately in the processes of cognition. But there is also the danger
of their becoming confused with, or isolated from, one another, especially at the
outset. This is the usual outcome when differentiation is still inadequate. It can be
observed in the history of cognition: the idea as the ground of being, the genus
preceding the species, and the species preceding the individual; or in descriptions
explaining the world as the result of miraculous creations. A similar ambiguity exists in the child: he
readily takes what he imagines for what is, and a description or account serves him as
an explanation. In this mixture of representation and reality are reflected not only the
previously noted fluctuations in the contours of representation, but also the fluctuations
in the contours of reality.

Relations concerning place are the first to extricate themselves from concrete
experience. They do this by stages. Initially, at the perceptual-motor level, sensorial,
postural, prehensive, and locomotive spaces are reduced to a single space, while this
space simultaneously becomes independent of the gestures or objects through which it
is manifested. In the child's explorations of the external world and of himself, he
demonstrates the progressive stages of this adaptation, which grows increasingly more
coherent, polyvalent, and encompassing. At the level of pure representation—that is,
in the absence of the object itself—questions concerning place follow closely on
questions of name. Distinctions of place therefore appear subordinate to the identification of objects by a suitable term. Indeed, if they have not been given a
clear-cut individuality, how could objects be imagined other than where they have
been perceived? The word is the sign that is indispensable for the reproduction of
objects in thought. It testifies to the permanence attributed to the sum of impressions
elicited by the presence of the same object. It fixes this presence and retains it at the
disposal of intellectual activity. It attests at once to the validity of this presence for all
like objects and affirms opposition to the unlike. It classifies as it qualifies. Relations of
place thus presuppose a qualitative representation of things.

Each level of existence has its corresponding structures. This is true for thought
as well as for life. Thought's function is to know; its object is the world. It can only
use and develop its material and derive constructions and systems from it that belong to
the realm of speculation. In this sense, idealism is right. But not to go further means to
confine oneself to a construction detached from its foundations, its permanent conditions, and its consequences. Causal relations are questions
experience must verify. When experience answers negatively, the best deductive system crumbles, and
the question must be formulated in another way. Hence, causality must always be patterned after something that at first appears irrational.

The forms of causality have varied considerably. As they have penetrated more
deeply into physical reality, the need for symbols and formulas of greater precision,
subtlety, and abstraction has grown proportionally, in order to represent the measure
these deeper aspects of reality. As experience, under the impact of advances in research, becomes more and more demanding, speculative imagination
must continuously extend its limits, which may thus become accessible only to certain
intelligences. But the child, in the beginning, is unable to trace the contours of even the
most commonplace forms of causality because they are constructs of thought already
beyond the raw data of experience.

PROBLEMS IN THE ORIGINS OF THOUGHT

A striking contrast in the intellectual behavior of the child exists between his
easy familiarization with the structures and mechanisms of things belonging directly to his sphere of activity, his inability to form coherent representations of
things that have not been objects of an experience, whether completed or only immediate. Thus, things that exist immediately and totally for him possess a quality
that goes beyond information from the senses: these are ultrathings, which may be constructed in conformity to, but
distinct from, the data of reality. For the adult, too, certain things remain ultrathings—for
example, questions of origin. Of course, the relevant question is not to determine
whether a child can resolve these problems, but to note how he reacts to them. Another problem whose facts elude him is that of growth, life, and death.
Certain ultrathings lose their "ultraquality" for the adult but retain it for the child. For
example, for the astronomist armed with telescopes and calculations, stars are no
longer ultrathings; for the physicist, farmer, or navigator, storms no longer have
ultraquality. But the effort required in this sphere of the child's imagination is to
some extent incommensurate with his inherent capacities. The absurdities or nonsense to
which an adult's explanations often lead the child is testimony to this.

Origin is existence placed in time, its beginning in time. But time and existence
remain commingled; it is possible to establish a relation between the two. Thus are
explained the contradictions the child incessantly confronts: the conflict between
duration that implies all existence and the succession that is supposed to explain it;
between a first cause and the infinite antecedents implied in the idea of cause;
between the identity proper to every imagined being and the differing states through which it has supposedly evolved. To integrate duration into succession and
succession into duration, the child must be capable of extracting time from things
and of constructing an order that can encompass all real or possible existence, because it is foreign to each
particular existence. To explain the origin of what is, present things must be integrated
into a sequence of conditions in which they can divest themselves of everything that
contributes to their actual, sensuous individuality. The child can only repeat his image
of things indefinitely in either a temporal or causal order, term after term, without
tracing them back collectively to their common cause. Thus, he thinks to avoid the
contradictions of human activity existing before light by moving successively from
electric lighting to kerosene, to oil, to candles, until he finally arrives at a dead end, to
which he is also led by the artificialism in his explanations of natural facts, without
actually finding the first term.

To study a child's thought in its development is to compare it explicitly or implicitly
with adult thought. This comparison leads to a recognition of the interplay of diverse
factors that maintain thought in variable equilibrium. Adult thought is itself not by any
means a fixed, immutable term with circumscribed limits, as certain definitions of
reason would imply. Not only has thought changed with historical eras and civilizations; it is still undergoing changes. In noting the
inadequacies, inconsistencies, and contradictions in a child's responses, we must
acknowledge that thought is by no means immediately adequate to things, nor does
it operate on a single level or offer a coherent structure. In particular, stigmata of
infantilism may be brought to light by an analysis of infantile thought. These are
confusions to which adult thought sometimes regresses and from which a child obviously has to extricate himself if he is to learn to
think objectively. The norm is not an a priori given; it is the result, always provisional
and sometimes marked by regressions, of a process in which realities, necessities, and
diverse aspirations confront each other.

Differences in thought are to be noted from one epoch to another, among individuals, and according to age. Are the causes of the same nature in these
different cases? If our ideas or knowledge were a simple sum augmented over time—more
slowly in the case of successive generations, whose task is the discovery of truth, or
more rapidly in the case of the individual, who benefits from the accumulated experiences of generations—the only differences would be of
quantity or proportion. But from one civilization to another, systems and principles
of thought that are often contrary confront each other. Although undoubtedly necessary stages in the
elaboration of our intellectual tools, knowledge can only be accumulative; is through
opposition of ideas that progress is achieved. Conflict wrests a new truth from an
old one. The quest for truth is a perpetual repudiation of error. Each epoch has its
truths, communicated through ideas and language, and illustrated and upheld by techniques of labor, ways of life, and the conditions of existence the social milieu
imposes on its members. Thus, assailed from all sides by his intellectual, moral,
and material surroundings, a child has no alternative but to adopt the corresponding
system of thought. If he deviates from it, it is because this adoption is hindered by
a different order of facts. The first opposition observed in a child's intellectual
development is that between tasks imposed by his environment and his own mental capacities.

It is easy to point out the difficulty the child under age eight experiences in
completely dissociating things from his personal experience of them. Of course, he
has for a long time been aware that things do not vanish permanently along with his
perceptions of ~ them; that even if they have disappeared, they can again be perceived, and that they consequently have an existence independent of the
impressions that inform him of their presence. But generally speaking, he does not
admit willingly that something might have existed prior to his own consciousness
Thus, all existence appears to be part of his own Certainly, some things might exist
of which he is not presently aware or of which he has up to now had no awareness
But without the stage that his self offers to the world, the world could not exist He
finds it hard to conceive of an existence prior to his own, even for those to whom
he owes his existence—his father and mother He vacillates between the necessity
of providing the newborn he once was with parents, a house, and so on and his powerlessness to dissolve the ties that bind things to his own sensibility Without
the capacity to experience their presence, things would not exist for him; therefore,
they do not exist in themselves He is as yet unable to dissociate subjective reality
from objective reality, or to place himself among things at the same time as he feels himself conscious of all things These two perspectives are still fused, he acts
as if he believed himself to impart existence to things inasmuch as he is there to experience them.

Thus the intellectual development of the child reveals the essential coordinates
of mental evolution. The functions all have an initial point from which they will
become differentiated through practice, in relation to the situations to which they
provide access. But this initial point marks the instant at which the function is
made possible by underlying structures. It is to the succession of these initial points
that the study of the origins of thought in the child ultimately returns.